RIXC Art Science Festival 2021
Adam BROWN. Shadows from the Walls of Death: Remediating Green.
Kristin BERGAUST. FELT – Living Technologies and Renewable Futures in Oslo
María CASTELLANOS VICENTE. The Plants Sense. A multispecies cyborg garden.
Adam BROWN. Shadows from the Walls of Death: Remediating Green.
Shadows from the Walls of Death: Remediating Green is a series of artworks that deconstructs the symbolic and superficial use of “green” as a pretense, synonymous with ecological and vegetal health, by recreating a highly toxic pigment called Paris Green and deadly wallpaper, thus ironically re-establishing humans’ material connection to the color green. By synthesizing this hyper-toxic green pigment, far from the images of the idealized pastoral nature, the performance draws its inspiration from the chemist Dr Robert Kedzie who, in 1874, wrote a book of the same title in an effort to raise public awareness about the dangers of arsenic-pigmented wallpaper. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries had given rise to modern cities removing humans from an entangled connection with nature. While a growing body of genetic, physiological and psychological evidence suggests that humans have evolved biologically and culturally to be attracted to greenness, this human drive to recreate greenness within urban settings led, however, to a series of paradoxes and contradictions: The very chemical processes artificially employed to bring greenness back into people’s lives paralleled the anthropogenic destruction of the environment. Mass produced toxic pigments were used – by artists, in printed wallpaper, and even as a colorant for candy – to replace the ‘nature’ that the Industrial Revolution was eroding. Painters armed with a relatively inexpensive palette of bright prismatic colors – such as Paris Green – emboldened artists to paint symbolic illusions of the natural world.
In the performance Shadows from the Walls of Death, Paris Green is synthesized in order to reproduce the deadly wallpaper. Finally, a Van Gogh referenced image is painted in Paris Green, only to be further bioremediated and detoxified by bacteria and fungi-based micro ecologies. Micro-ecologies capable of detoxifying arsenic exist due to the ecological principle summarized by Baas Becking hypothesis: ‘Everything is everywhere, but the environment selects.’ Here, these non-human micro ecologies not only help us out of this toxic environmental predicament but also deconstruct ontologies acknowledging only human individuality. As an indexical act this artistic action opens up fields of questioning beyond the symbolic, and emphasizes the importance of a material, epistemological and art politics, since the chemical synthesis of toxic pigments radically altered the course of art history itself. The concept of the Anthropocene demands a form of remediated, indeed bioremediated art that can operate on multiple scales, independent of human belief or desires.
Adam W. Brown is an Intermedia artist, scholar, and researcher. His work incorporates art and science hybrids including living and biological systems, robotics, molecular chemistry, and emerging technologies that take the form of installations, interactive objects, video, performance and photography. Brown is a Full Professor at Michigan State University where he created a new area of study called Electronic Art & Intermedia and directs the Bridge Artist in Residency Program. Brown has exhibited widely in international venues in North and South America as well as in Europe, and received awards including several honorary mentions at the Prix Ars Electronica. In 2020 Brown received the Grand Prize for [ir]reverent: Miracles on Demand, in the 23rd Japan Media Arts Festival.
María CASTELLANOS VICENTE. The Plants Sense. A multispecies cyborg garden.
The Plants Sense, exhibited in the PostSensorium exhibition, is an alive installation, a cyborg garden that allows the audience to know and experience the secret language of plants.
In this multiespecies garden, plants and machines cohabit together in an ecosystem–also altered by the presence of humans–, that aims to figure out more about the language of plants.
The work consists of an interactive garden in which different sensors measure the electrical oscillations of the connected plants, and show their biochemical reactions to the human presence and the environment that surrounds them. All this information is processed and translated into vibrations, movements and sound that allow the visitor to perceive the plants through several interfaces.
In other words, all the connected plants works like a big brain that controls the machines that are installed in the garden. This is possible through use of an algorithm; a self-organizing map, SOM. That allow us to order and organize the data received from the plants in a server
This interaction makes possible the communication between humans and plants, thus reaching the understanding of the vegetal language thought the visualization of patterns along the time. So, the installation translates and transmits precisely those signals that humans, due to our limited perceptual system, cannot receive in other way.
María Castellanos is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of art, science, technology and society. She holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Doctorate in Contemporary Arts Practices from the University of Vigo (SP), with an Extraordinary Phd Award 2016. Currently she is postdoctoral researcher at OsloMet in the framework of FeLT Project –Futures of Living Technologies–
Her work was exhibited and performed at venues and festivals such as Ars Electronica Festival (AT), LABoral Art Centre (SP) , Athens Digital Arts Festival (GR), Onassis Stegi (GR), House of electronic Arts Basel(CH), La Gâite Lyrique Museum (FR), DRIVE Volskwagen (DE), Matatero Madrid (SP), Bozar Electronic Art Festival (BE), Arts Santa Mónica (SP), Touch me Festival (CH), CEBIT Festival (DE).